THIS episode of “Charlie’s Monday Marker” looks at the legacy of Pittsburgh “working-class” sports in 20th-century baseball, football and boxing.THIS episode of “Charlie’s Monday Marker” looks at the legacy of Pittsburgh “working-class” sports in 20th-century baseball, football and boxing.
A CENTURY AGO, bitter labor struggles in the steel industry challenged a system of total corporate control over an immigrant workforce supported by the suppression of civil liberties in mill towns and coal patches.
The 1919 Steel Strike of Braddock, Pennsylvania was defeated by a relentless anti-immigrant, anti-foreign campaign by the local press, combined with the cynical manipulation of racial divisions and ethnic insecurities by US Steel.
Two central questions from that time remain with us today: Who is an American? What is an American?